Author's Note: Phew! It's finally done! I worked so hard on this; on the planning, on the thousands of different versions of this I wrote of this first chapter. But I must say, I am really, really excited about this story.
First of all I'd like to mention that this fic is the result of a silly little meme, in which you put your mp3 player on shuffle and write a story based on the first song that pops up. Mine was "Beneath the Balcony", by Iron and Wine.
Second, I'd like to give a quick thanks to The Glass Slipper, since her fic Adverstising Space awas born of the same meme and thus inspired me to write this, and she encouraged me to do so, and is often there with a reassuring livejournal comment on the many occasions on which I need to rant about my writings.
And third...
Warning: This fic contains several potentially disturbing scenes/instances, including particualrly graphic violence and character death.
Beneath the Balcony
Chapter One
"Distance"
In the light of a dying day – which had been rather dull and grey to begin with – Roxas found himself in a particularly unnerving situation.
The location had been eerie enough at the start; a train station completely empty aside from himself and a few restless workers. If Roxas recalled correctly, not a week ago, at around this same time, this same station had been uncomfortably crowded. Something about the sudden, utter lack of noise and confusion sent Roxas into a state of near paranoia, though at any other time he would have found it comforting.
The few people that were scattered around the high-ceilinged room made no sound; there was not even an announcement to signify the arrival and departure of various trains. Just the dry, echoing click and flip of the changing time board.
As expected, there was no one waiting at the track where Roxas's train was scheduled to come in. Only him and his shuffling feet and over-stuffed suitcase. Everything else seemed to be missing, felt as if it had been plucked from its rightful place and now he was standing in nothing but the empty shell that was left behind.
A light breeze brushed his face, whistling slightly through the tunnel that lead back to the station. The sound was high and faint, and it sent a half-shiver through Roxas's arms, raising goose bumps and tightening his nerves.
He snorted, shaking his head so as to flip his hair out of his eyes, and blaming his pinpricked flesh on the chill of the breeze rather than the strange air of emptiness and misplacement. He wouldn't admit it, but something was off and it rattled him.
"Roxas, right?" an entirely unfamiliar voice asked, a smirk audibly decorating the speaker's unseen face.
Bewildered, Roxas turned to peer at the source through rumpled blonde bangs that had merely fallen back into place after his unsuccessful attempt to relocate them.
Unfortunately, the speaker was not nearly as unfamiliar as his voice had been. Roxas had seen him one too many times before. Over the past few weeks, he'd consistently caught glimpses of that fiery mass of hair, flashes of those verdant eyes and their tattoo thorns. But that was all they were – glimpses and flashes in a crowd. He'd never before had a voice to put behind the smirk, or a tall, lanky frame to set it all upon.
And he'd prayed that he never would.
For a very long while, Roxas debated between ignoring this familiar stranger and asking just how the man had known his name, the wind still whistling and his nerves still shivering. It was a valiant effort on the part of common sense, but curiosity – as it so often does – killed the cat.
Lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the blaze of the setting sun, which had reached an angle at which its assault on his eyes was perfectly aimed, Roxas felt a pout pucker his lips, which furthered his frustration. Pouting was supposed to be Sora's thing.
"How did you - " he began, before his voice was caught in his throat by a smile that had once been amused but was now a little more sinister, or maniacal.
"I heard you when you were talking to the teller."
Yes, Roxas remembered having answered several such questions when buying his ticket, but he also remembered that the station had been devoid of any other passengers at the time. This man had most definitely not been within earshot.
"No one was in the station then," the blonde murmured, dropping his tone in an effort to hide his discomfort.
The man's expression and crooked, slung-hip posture remained still as he answered, "Only those who were necessary."
"What?" Roxas almost snapped, his level of annoyance rising considerably at this vague, nonsensical statement.
An easy shrug lifted the redhead's shoulders. "Visiting a friend?" he drawled knowingly.
Blinking, the younger nodded. Hayner had moved to the suburbs a few months ago and had begged him to visit. Roxas had only agreed for one reason: to try and lose the fiery hair and slashing smirk that now stood before him.
He cleared his throat noiselessly, stretching to his full height and setting his face into a less affected composition. "You've been following me," he said accusingly, taking care to narrow his eyes and raise his chin in a manner that had always succeeded in dragging the truth out of Sora.
The stranger chuckled, a low, stumbling – albeit pleasing – sound that brewed happily in his throat. "For longer than you'd care to know," he admitted, stepping closer to Roxas. His grin was so lopsided, bright, and wide that Roxas couldn't help but take a few cautionary steps backwards. His thigh connected with his suitcase, knocking it over. The resulting thud echoed loudly in the empty, open air.
Roxas kept his eyes trained on the redhead. "Why?" he asked shakily.
The other man responded only with a slight, upward jerk of his chin and a quirk of his eyebrow.
With a thundering, clamoring whoosh of air, a passing train claimed Roxas's attention. His nervous retreat had brought him meager inches away from the platform's edge, and the dizzying realization threatened to throw him into the blur of metal. His heart pounded, but his blood stood stagnant in his veins as he stumbled, turning to watch the train, eyes wide and lips pale.
The track emptied as quickly as it had been filled, and the air popped with the small sound of a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. The will to retrieve it was nowhere to be found, and his knees suddenly resented the weight they were holding, shaking and knocking and threatening to topple. Roxas felt cold, and sweat dripped from his forehead as he ground his teeth and struggled to stay standing. He would not let himself fall in front of this man.
As the thought crossed his mind, the shock that this was all he could think of after nearly dying proved enough to steady him and allow him to catch his breath; though his breathing seemed either too shallow or slightly off rhythm. Ignoring this slight discomfort, he took a step backwards in preparation to turn and continue his previous conversation.
A solid warmth stopped his progress as thin hands slowly worked their way up his sides, coming to rest on his ribcage. He made a move to push the stranger away, but found that he was frozen in place; from shock, maybe. A near death experience followed by such molesting was probably enough to stun you motionless.
Hot breath slithered past his ear, curling in the crook of his neck as a sinister voice whispered in amusement.
"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."
In the instant that those words had disappeared, Roxas felt a strange sensation, as if some unseen tether had been cut, and he staggered in place before whirling around to confront his stalker.
But the platform was clear. Where there had once stood a thin, smirking creep, there was now, inexplicably, nothing. Bright blue eyes scanned the surroundings carefully, narrowing as Roxas's mouth was again drawn into a hated pout. When they reached the track where the blonde had nearly met his match, they found yet another train, still and quiet with doors open, patiently waiting for its passenger.
Wonder at where his stranger had gone, and how he had gotten there so quickly, was pushed aside by Roxas's worry that those patient doors would soon close and he would be out fifty bucks. He leaned down to grab the handle of his suitcase and drag it into the train, down the compartment aisle, and hoist it onto the overhead luggage rack.
Sliding into his seat, Roxas was glad to find that there were several others in the compartment. An old man, his crooked nose buried in a crisp newspaper, across the hall. In front of him, a shock of hair of an indeterminate gender, and back a few seats, a young man with a young woman curled sleeping at his side. He felt like the real world had caught up with him at last, and, to his surprise, it was a strange feeling. Maybe he had been the one plucked from his rightful place, and now he'd been dropped back in, slightly askew.
Shrugging, Roxas brushed such thoughts aside, labeling them as the beginnings of bad poetry and leaning against the window to shut his eyes and just relax; let the train rush right past the world he was glad to be leaving behind as he headed towards home.
The horse was dying.
It showed no outward signs of dying; its coat was shining copper and healthy, its mane and tail well groomed. It happily grazed in its quaint, fenced-in pasture, shifting the weight on its back legs and brushing away flies with its tail. Thick, powerful muscles shifted visibly under its taught skin, and its ears flickered, picking up thousands of distant sounds.
And yet, somehow, Roxas knew the horse was dying.
Concerned, he walked forward, blinking at the beast and placing a hand on the damp, upper beam of the old-fashioned fence. Under even his brief, gentle touch, the wood crumbled with a dry shifting noise, falling away in blunt, rotten splinters. The rest of the beam's balance was lost and it fell forward, slipping easily away from the notch in the post it rested in. It crashed into a second beam with a dull crack, splitting the length of wood and allowing it to dissolve into splinters as well.
Roxas stepped back, looking around nervously to make sure no one had seen the destruction he'd somehow managed to cause. The air was still, and for as far as he could see there was nothing but grass, a stretch of forest at the edge of the pasture, and, in the opposite direction, the occasional clump of trees. He'd expected some sort of barn or stable to rise unnaturally from the ground, and yet there was only the fence.
Shrugging, he passed through the space created by the fallen rungs and made his careful way to the dying horse. It's back was to him, and so he made sure that his steps were heavy and audible as he traced his way in a wide arch towards the horse's starred face.
It snorted impatiently, as if to acknowledge Roxas's slow approach, lifting its head and swinging its long neck gracefully around to blink at him with large, dull eyes.
Maybe it was the eyes…
The soft, distant sound of a hawk's cry echoed through the stagnant air, capturing the horse's attention, its ears standing alert and its muscles tensing. Roxas followed the line of its sight to the nearby stretch of woods. There was no sign of the bird, just the unmoving trees, their branches heavy with fresh leaves.
Snorting himself, Roxas turned back to the horse, resting a palm against the side of its neck and frowning softly. He had never interacted much with horses, but he knew that a horse of this shade, in this heat – hell, any living horse, of any shade, in any heat – should have been warm to the touch. This one was cool and smooth as stone. Nothing about its feel seemed alive. If not for its constant movement, its blinking and shifting, he never would have guessed that it wasn't a statue.
Which still didn't explain why, from a distance, with nothing to go on but appearances and behavior, Roxas had thought – no, known – that the horse was dying.
A flutter of branches to the left sent the bay trotting, a little less than amiably, away, tossing its head and whinnying softly. Roxas stood still as the hawk cried again, finally drifting lazily from the woods to follow the retreating horse.
He had no idea why the dream disturbed him so much. There was absolutely nothing strange about it; nothing disturbing about a horse and a hawk, even if the horse was dying. Nothing much had even occurred in this dream. He'd seen the horse, an old fence had broken, and the hawk had flown. Everything had been so straightforward, simple, and normal.
Maybe it was that simplicity, that normalcy, that frightened him. On the rare occasion that he'd had the fortune to remember his dreams, they had all been twisted, off-color versions of reality, or nonsensical happenings in some strange alternate world. This dream had been completely realistic. The colors, the events, everything was as it would have been in the waking world. It didn't matter that Roxas had, without any sign or warning, known the horse was close to death, because it was a dream. There was no precursor, no past to that dream, and so – he reasoned – there could have been any number of ways that he had learned about the horse before the dream had begun.
Silently, he laughed at himself. Dwelling on dreams wasn't something he made a habit of, and he didn't see any reason why this dream should be different. So, he pushed the thoughts aside and continued his way across the parking lot, eyes locked on a familiar car in the far corner. As he trudged closer, dragging his heavy luggage behind him, the driver's door opened slowly, a little slip of a teenager exiting and stretching onto his tip-toes to wave excitedly.
"Hey! How was it?" The boy asked as Roxas reached him to stare into a face identical to his own. Oftentimes the only noticeable differences between the two were the shade of their hair and the set of their mouths. Roxas's baby-blues were framed by gold, Sora's by chocolate; Roxas's mouth lay in a thin, indifferent line, Sora's stretched in a wide grin or puckered in a confused, stubborn pout.
Shoulders rising in a shrug, Roxas answered. "Alright, I guess."
Sora mimicked his twin's shrug, though it rested considerably more easily on his small shoulders. After a short, silent moment, his eyes slid towards Roxas, blinking slowly, their expression a good deal dimmer than it had been seconds earlier.
"How's Hayner?" he asked reluctantly. As Roxas turned to look at his brother, Sora dropped his head quickly, that familiar pout tracing his lips.
"He's…okay," the blonde answered just as cautiously. He'd expected this question from Sora, who had once been much closer to Hayner than his twin now was, or – Roxas suspected – than he wanted to be. Neither of them had offered any explanation as to what had brought about the end of their friendship, and the Roxas never had a mind to request one.
"Did he…say anything? About me, I mean." The brunette finally lifted his head, feigning only passing interest in the answer.
"Yeah," Roxas lied, "He asked how you were. I said you were doing well."
"Oh. Uh, good then. I'm glad."
Raising a brow sharply, Roxas wondered at what Sora had meant by his jumbled response. With another shrug, he decided not to bother and opened the door to the car's passenger seat. His brother followed suit shortly after, starting the car and clearing his throat as he backed out of the parking space.
"Cloud's back," Sora mentioned casually as they slipped easily into the flow of traffic on the freeway.
"Where did he go?" No one had said anything about Cloud being gone in the first place; not to Roxas anyway.
"To visit Ansem. I think that's what he said…anyway, he's back now."
Frowning, Roxas shrugged and turned to watch the passing suburbia through his window. He wasn't very fond of the whole scenic view thing, but it provided better entertainment than his brother's current grappling for a subject that would take his mind off…whatever. Hayner?
They passed a farmhouse after a few minutes, its sprawling acres of emptied fields lined with the grey, double-railed wooden fence often used for outlining such properties. Roxas's thoughts instantly returned to his dream, which inevitably led them back to the train station.
He wondered if he should mention the stalker to Sora. It was a big deal – Sora would want to know. But would Sora believe him?
The whole experience had been surreal, Roxas wasn't even sure of its reality himself. Shrugging, he decided it was worth a shot. He'd always found that talking things out seemed to help him sort through everything.
"I…" he trailed off, somehow unable to work past his unbidden hesitation.
"Yeah?" Sora asked, songbird eyes flicking briefly towards his twin.
"I think someone's been following me."
The smaller boy made a squeaking, half-stifled sort of shriek as his head whipped to the side to stare wide-eyed at Roxas.
"Sora," the blonde warned, nervously watching the road.
"What? How can…who…Roxas?"
Roxas wasn't sure if Sora was worried because someone was following his twin, or if he was just concerned for Roxas's sanity. Both were equally likely, so Roxas carefully studied Sora's expression as the other boy finally returned his attention to driving.
"Can you please explain this to me, Roxie?" he requested after a short, silent moment.
Hating the sound of Sora's nickname for him, Roxas took a deep breath before slowly explaining his stalker's fleeting appearances and the incident at the train station.
As he did so, a quick chill sputtered up his spine and the sound of the strange redhead's easy chuckle rang in his ears. It took all his willpower to prevent himself from turning to confirm that the backseat was indeed empty.
"You're sure you didn't see him in the station, before you got to the track?" Sora asked once Roxas had finished. His tone was flat.
"Yeah. I've been…checking for him lately." He didn't like how that sentence made him sound - paranoid, obsessive.
"Well," the brunette sighed, "Be careful."
Sora sounded worried. Roxas could tell it wasn't because of the stalker. It was because of Roxas.
"You're still here," Axel said with a quick, exasperated sigh.
Riku blinked slowly, coughing purposefully as he tucked his knees under his chin and hugged his thighs to his chest. It was a striking sight; the gleam of silver hair and glow of turquoise eyes set against the room's otherwise colorless décor.
Prolonged silence. Riku refused to move, eyes fixed almost longingly on the thick, completely opaque curtains that hung on the only window. Axel leaned against the far wall, close to the door, absently scratching at the small tattoo on his cheek.
After several, very long moments, the redhead pushed away from the wall with another short sigh.
"Move on, kid."
Closing his eyes, Riku uncurled and leaned back to lie on the cool, tiled floor.
Thousands of memories flickered across his mind.
"I like your scent best," the unseen boy whispered, hair falling forward to brush at the nape of Riku's neck.
"Somehow, it actually helped my aim."
"I feel like I'm not helping him at all, like he made a mistake…when…never mind. You probably don't want to hear all this."
"I know it's not right, but I can't help but be thankful for it. I love it," the girl sneered, voice icy with malice.
"Be careful, Riku."
And finally:
"Hey kid, promise to never forget me? No matter what happens?"